Today’s fantastical news (special feature): Elon Musk

Since my teenage years I have been searching for an idol- a person who was worthy of my respectful admiration and reverence. Regretfully, I found nobody worthy of the crown. Either my standards were set too high or my contact sphere did not bring such admirable and noteworthy individuals to my attention.

In the past decade though, I have met countless people who have alternately amazed, inspired, provoked and expanded by own thinking and beliefs in diverse spheres. Lots of these people are ordinary people, people who could be counted as celebrities for their thoughts and actions but have not achieved any level of fame. These people are special because they do the amazing just by being true to who they are.

But I am happy to report that several noted personalities have also come to my attention whose cult-status is deserved, and one such man is Elon Musk. This tireless genius deserves every accolade that comes his way. Seldom do we come across such a prodigious talent in business who is at the helm of multiple successful companies that are set out to change the world~ and with Page and Brin, yours truly is also betting on him succeeding!

Is true genius only one who actually brings his ideas to life? No… but it doesn’t hurt now, does it?

Most people are familiar with his successes and efforts with respect to Paypal, SpaceX, Tesla Motors, SolarCity, his new Hyperloop and OpenAI… so I am going to refrain from waxing eloquently on these subjects. What caught my attention today was Musk’s thoughts on what humans need to develop further to stay ahead of artificial intelligence~ Neural Lace.

You can be forgiven if you are hearing this term for the first time. ‘Neural Lace’ was coined in the Culture novels by Iain M. Banks, where futuristic post-humans install devices on their brains called a “neural lace.” It is a mesh that grows with your brain and is essentially a wireless brain-computer interface.

Mr. Musk clearly believes that his OpenAI efforts might not be enough to ‘tackle AI beings in the future that would not be benign’ and is concerned ‘that AI could take a direction that would not be good for the future’. At the annual Code conference, Musk shared that Neural Lace might be an answer and hopes somebody would pursue what is just an idea for now. But he also added that if nobody did then he might have to take it up: thereby potentially adding even more to his almost impossibly filled plate.